The agreement was signed on 19 June in Brussels by Serbian Minister of Culture Ivan Tasovac and European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth Androulla Vassiliou and it will make it possible for Serbian organisations to use funds from Creative Europe’s Culture sub-programme.

The past EU programme for culture, between 2007 and 2013, amounting to a total of 400 million euro, allocated around 1.2 million euro of non-refundable grants to Serbian cultural organisations, managers of around 40 projects chosen for EU funding, with another dozen projects they co-organised.

Serbia did not take part in the earlier MEDIA sub-programme, but the activities organised under the auspices of MEDIA Mundus were open to professionals and audiovisual companies from Serbia. Among other regional non-EU countries, Creative Europe includes Bosnia and Herzegovina in both programmes, Culture and MEDIA.

Film Center Serbia, the Serbian equivalent of HAVC, is a member of European Film Promotion (EFP), a promotional organisation that since 2009 hosts a Serbian representative, Miroljub Vučković. Also, seven Serbian cinemas are part of the international cinema operators’ network Europa Cinemas, thanks to the grants provided by Eurimages.

Early in December 2013, representatives of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre presented the Croatian audiovisual model at Film Center Serbia, i.e. the management model and decision-making mechanisms, strategic goals of the national programme, recent cinema results etc.

More information about Creative Europe is available on this link and more details about Film Center Serbia can be found here.